Is suburban sprawl a positive feature we should embrace?

Suburban sprawl doesn’t create affordability. Instead, it’s a sign of community policies that encourage production of all kinds of housing. Affordability is a function of the quantity of housing, not housing type.

Most urban planners and landscape architects dislike suburban sprawl. Admittedly, much of suburbia is a bland, placeless morass of cookie-cutter houses, underserved by poorly designed transportation systems. Well-designed suburbs like Irvine are more the exception than the rule.

The uninspired past of suburbia warrants criticism, but communities like Irvine prove that nothing about suburbia is intrinsically negative. Urban areas can be just as poorly executed as suburban ones, and favoring high-density development near transit hubs does nothing to guarantee the quality of life will be any better for residents than unchecked suburban sprawl.

Despite the opinions of many urban planners, suburban sprawl is not universally bad, and it shouldn’t be considered an evil to be avoided at all times and at all costs. Suburbia is a Mecca for families who covet clean, safe neighborhoods unfettered by junkies, homeless people, and the assortment of unseemly characters most often found in urban areas. The less suburban development communities provide, the more valuable these enclaves become.

Building suburbs makes cities more affordable than building towers, according to research released Wednesday

By LAURA KUSISTO, Sep 14, 2016 10:42 am ET

Building sprawling suburbs is better at making cities affordable than building tall towers, according to research released Wednesday.

Environmentalists, urban planners and economists are pushing cities such as New York and San Francisco to build more housing to help combat rapidly rising rents and home prices that are crowding out the middle class. But trying to build upward in order to keep cities accessible to average families may be a losing battle, according to findings to be released Wednesday by BuildZoom, a website for contractors.

The conclusions of this study are wrong. Suburbs do not create affordability. Instead, unchecked suburban sprawl is a sign of policies that do not restrict housing development of all kinds, and that is what creates affordable cities.

Suburban sprawl does not create affordability because suburbs simply aren’t dense enough. The costs of roads and infrastructure and the services that support housing is far more expensive in suburban areas than it is in more densely developed urban areas. While the cost of houses may be lower than the cost of high-density condos, the infrastructure costs are much higher for houses, and when the two are considered together, suburban development is not a bargain.

I recently noted that The recent apartment boom is great for California because high-density development by definition puts more housing units on an acre of land, and in markets like Coastal California with a chronic shortage of housing, the more units the better. Once a market is underserved, they type of housing matters much less than the quantity of it.

In other words, we can build our way back to affordability, but that won’t occur by promoting suburban sprawl over high-density infill development.

Even cities that were able to increase the pace of housing construction without sprawling, such as Portland and Seattle, were unable to keep pace with demand nearly as well as their counterparts that spread outward. Portland saw inflation-adjusted home values increase 78% from 1980 to 2010 and Seattle saw home prices jump 119%, according to BuildZoom. Meanwhile, Las Vegas saw real home values increase just 4.7% and Atlanta saw a mere 14% jump.

It wasn’t the sprawl that made Las Vegas and Atlanta more affordable than Portland or Seattle. Both Las Vegas and Atlanta have few barriers to residential development, and Portland and Seattle do. Portland in particularly was much more affordable before passing slow-growth legislation that inhibits the ability of developers to provide enough houses to accommodate a strong economy.

There are a variety of reasons why building up has proven less effective at keeping housing costs down. For one, tall buildings are more expensive to build than single-family homes, so the apartments and condos in them tend to be pricier.

Costs do not drive prices. When prices get high enough to warrant more expensive construction, then that construction occurs. Further, as I pointed out above, this glib analysis completely ignores the infrastructure costs, which are much higher for suburban sprawl.

If American cities were willing to level single-family homes and build apartment towers, they could likely keep up with demand without sprawl, but that is unlikely given the political power given to local community groups and the radical changes that would mean to virtually any American city outside of Manhattan.

And who would want to live in places like that? Suburbs have their place.

“The big takeaway is that if expensive cities like New York and San Francisco want to do something about affordability they have to do so at a scale that is unprecedented in this country,” said Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom. “Realistically the odds of that happening are slim to none.”

Unfortunately, he’s probably right.

“What you’ll get there is an exacerbation of the problems we already have in expensive cities. The distinction between homeowners and renters will become less and less a stage of life and more and more if your parents can help you. That’s not a future that seems very welcoming to me,” Mr. Romem said.

This is already a sad reality in most of Coastal California, particularly since much of our entry-level housing stock is priced above the conforming loan limit. At this point, only people with Daddy Warbucks helping them have the supersized down payments necessary to buy a home. While that may be great for silver spooners, what about those who aren’t so fortunate? Why should they be excluded from homeownership?

What we need isn’t more suburban sprawl. We need policies that allow us to build enough of all types of housing to meet the demands of our growing population.

38 responses to “Is suburban sprawl a positive feature we should embrace?”

How should the media respond when a Presidential candidate is caught lying? I don’t mean the small political prevarications that all politicians engage in — I refer to the uniquely outsized bullshit that has been dominating this election cycle.

So far, the mainstream press has been doing a mostly terrible job. However, that may be changing. To wit: Presidential candidate Donald Trump held a news conference Friday morning, where he:

1) Promoted his commercial interests in a hotel;
2) Admitted Barack Obama was born in United States;
3) Blamed the birther movement on Hilary Clinton.

Like so much else this election season, the media has been flummoxed in responding to such Trumpian absurdities like these. While some news outlets have acquitted themselves well – the Washington Post’s deep dive into Trump’s fabricated claims of charitable donations stands out – most of his unprecedented stream of falsities, exaggerations and outright lies has twisted them into knots.

Until Friday.

For the first time, a major media outlet responded to the Trump modus operandi appropriately. The New York Times called out his prevarications with an intelligent parry and counter-thrust, responding to the candidate’s histrionic absurdities with proper journalistic clarity. Online late in the afternoon, they published the column Donald Trump Clung to ‘Birther’ Lie for Years, and Still Isn’t Apologetic; in print the next day it was an above-the-fold, front page headline for the Saturday paper.

Michael Barbaro’s blistering analysis of the Trump birther issue was one of the first to not dance around the truth. Rather than engage in the usual genteel contortions to not challenge the falsehoods of a major candidate when responding to an outright lie, the writer placed Trump’s words into proper context. The result was a spectacularly accurate assessment of an historically important lie.

Perhaps even more important, the “paper of record” unwittingly created a template for other journalists wrestling with the unique challenges of covering Trump’s many fabrications. (I have found such templates to be helpful in the past).

Here is that template; journalists covering the campaign are encouraged to copy and paste this for future use.

Template for Reporters Covering Donald Trump

Trump false statement

Identify history of prior false claims, by listing lies in Chronological order

2011: Tells a lie [insert description]

2012: Still a lie when it was repeated [insert description]

2014: Still lying [insert description]

2016: Amazingly, lying still [insert description]

Contextualize how Trump managed to never get called out on the lie; reference the social impact of these false statements, including overtones of racism.

Point out facts demonstrating to any rational person Trump’s statements were obvious lies prior to listed dates.

Reference Trump’s embrace of conspiracy, use flowery language to describe the toxicity of the lie. Mention how good minded associates of his are embarrassed by it.

Point out how he worked to “mainstream” a fringe falsehood.

Social media reference, where facts do not matters.

Explain how the lie was repeated on live television, unchallenged by fact-checking.

Reference the various lightweight (i.e., non-news) shows where the lie was repeated, without serious challenges from lightweight anchors.

Point out how his aides and advisors say he has moved on, even as he keeps repeating the lie.

Reference his skillful manipulation of television.

Describe the lie being replaced with an even more bizarre new deception.

Describe the narcissism involved.

Reference the lies with interesting turns of phrase: “casual elasticity with the truth;” and “exhausted an army of fact-checkers;” and “insidious, calculated calumny.”

Repeat reference to underlying racism coursing through the lie.

Use an Obama quote to show Trump’s lack of eloquence or statesmanship.

– End –

Journalists should save this template for future usage.

When you are confronted with a pathological liar running for public office, you should respond with context and history, with literary flourishes and honesty.

Each and every bizarre falsehood that challenges the fabric of our democracy – be it about his income or his taxes, or about the charitable gifts he never was party to or the litigation he was, about how if he loses, the election must be rigged, this is how the reporters covering the campaign should respond.

Trump’s become that crazy oddball uncle, he even look like him, everyone knows is full of BS, who won’t stop spouting BS, and whom everyone now ignores because it’s so much easier than trying to deal with him.

Realistically, the people who were going to vote for him don’t care anyway. He could say anything he wants, and they won’t change their minds.

He needs to just ignore his past statements and start pandering to undecided and independent voters. Many people don’t pay much attention to politics until the month or two before the election. They either don’t care about or don’t know about his past statements. If he tells them what they want to hear now, he still has a good chance of winning the election.

Well, there is a disconnect then, because every public opinion poll rates Clinton as less trustworthy than Trump. In fact, it’s her biggest weakness as a candidate according to the American public, and she would probably be winning decisively without that image problem hanging over her. Luckily, Wallstreet (via Ritholz) and the elite media (via NY Times) are teaming up to remedy that situation.

Public perception is one thing, and reality is another. Both Clinton and Trump lie about many things, but Trump’s are more brazen and outrageous. Clinton at least attempts to cloak her lies in half-truths like Bill did. Trump just says what he wants and lets the chips fall where they may. Ritholtz is trained as an attorney, so he appreciates a more nuanced lie.

Two years ago, David Nguyen, his wife and his daughter were the first to move into their block in Irvine’s new Portola Springs neighborhood.

Within a few months, they saw the street fill up with two Indian families next door, and Filipino, Korean and Latino families across the way. Their meticulously planned community may appear beige and cookie-cutter to passers-by, but its residents are far from culturally homogenous.

Portola Springs symbolizes a milestone reached by one of Southern California’s fastest-growing suburbs.

New census estimates show that, for the first time, Irvine has more Asian than white residents. It’s a thin lead, well within the report’s margin of error, but the strongest evidence yet of what many residents, scholars and real estate professionals see as an accelerating trend.

Using the new census figures, a Register analysis indicates Irvine now is – or soon will be – the largest city in the continental United States with an Asian plurality. Among larger municipalities, only Honolulu has more Asians than any other race.

More than 45 percent of Irvine’s roughly 257,000 residents are Asian, according to American Community Survey estimates released Thursday.

And it is partly the city’s evolution as a decidedly upscale and aspirational multinational community that is increasing its appeal at home and abroad – and setting it apart from some Asian residential and cultural magnets, such as Little Saigon in Westminster and Garden Grove, or the “Chinatowns” of many major cities, experts say.

Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst and demographer at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., quipped that Irvine has proven such a powerful draw for well-to-do Asian families that the city should consider switching its official vegetable (yes, it has such a thing) from asparagus to Chinese bok choy or Japanese daikon radish.

After a heady recovery from post-crash lows, real estate values in many ways are back to roughly where they were before the last dose of harsh reality hit housing especially hard.

As a numbers guy, I’d think the early warning signs of any pending real estate boom-to-doom would show up in industry stats. Sometimes they do.

But usually the best way to find cracks in the property game’s economic foundation is to listen carefully to real estate chatter. When it sounds too good to be true, too confident, a little off-base or even somewhat whiny … be careful.

Please note that basic fundamentals for housing – you know, the numbers – look solid, both in the region as well as for much of the nation. But I’m starting to hear some talk and actions that I’ll politely call “nutty” – you know, the attitude.

It’s nothing blatantly “watch out below” crazy but rather more subtle signs that real estate’s progress is being taken for granted. Here are six examples I’ve seen recently in public opinion polls.

TOO PRICEY?

Homebuyers said pricing was decidedly the top concern about buying this summer.

That’s seemingly logical: Twenty-eight percent of 1,800 homebuyers polled cited affordability as their major worry, a survey from the Redfin brokerage found. Look, the national Case-Shiller index shows prices are up 36 percent from post-crash lows of 2012.

In the poll, pricing worry got a larger response than the next two anxieties combined: competition from other shoppers (13 percent) and limited inventory (12 percent).

A year ago, affordability was also the top concern at 27 percent, but the runner-ups – competition and inventory – combined for 31 percent of the survey answers.

On one hand, pricing has grown as a top-of-mind house hunter worry. But one might wonder why buyers bought if they thought they paid too much. Buyers should also know that too many shoppers chasing not enough selection can make for disappointing pricing.

Yet House Republicans want to abolish the CFPB who protects us from Wells Fargo

Another shoe is about to drop on Wells Fargo, as the megabank attempts to weather the storm surrounding the $185 million fine levied against it for the “widespread unlawful” practices of more than 5,000 former employees who opened more than two million fake accounts in order to get sales bonuses.

In addition to the fine Wells Fargo must pay, the bank is also facing an investigation by the Department of Justice, an inquiry from the Senate Banking Committee, and now an investigation by the House Financial Services Committee.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, announced the investigation Friday, stating the committee wants to review all of the records and materials that led to this fine and plans to call Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf to testify.

Stumpf is already set to testify before the Senate Banking Committee next week.

In a letter sent to James Strother, Wells Fargo’s senior executive vice president and general counsel, Hensarling states that the committee is “very concerned by these serious allegations” and plans to investigate Wells Fargo’s “questionable sales practices and corresponding agreements with federal regulators in order to evaluate the application, administration, execution, and effectiveness of Federal law.”

1. The LA City Attorney
2. The OCC (Federal Regulator)
3. The San Francisco Federal Reserve

The CFPB swooped in at the end demanding a fine, but they did absolutely nothing to detect the fraud, investigate it, or prevent the fraud from occurring in the first place. The existence of the CFPB did not protect consumers from a top bank, arguably their reason for existing, and this actually backs the point that Republicans have been making.

They missed the biggest fraud case since the financial meltdown, despite no complaints from the Director of a lack of funding or oversight authority. If you are honest with yourself, you will admit they failed at their mission.

I was hoping you would take the bait on the left-wing meme of expanding a bureaucracy in response to its failure.

If the CFPB missed this, then they need to look at their procedures internally and figure out how to prevent missing stuff like this in the future. Protecting the public is their only job, and Wells Fargo abused the public for five years without anyone catching them. That’s a problem on multiple levels.

One couple in in Monterey, California, found out the hard way that they bought a home previously owned by a serial killer, according to an article by Inside Edition.

The couple, Scott and Laura Cotes, discovered the home’s past when they uncovered a body buried in the back yard, according to the article. In fact, the serial killer buried two of his victims on the property, according to police.

From the article:

“This is where we found the body,” Scott Cotes said, pointing to the garden. “You could never be prepared for somebody to look at you and say a serial killer has been living in your house.”

The Cotes say they were never told about the home’s history when they bought it.

“It’s stunning, shocking and surreal all at once,” said Laura.

The Cotes are now suing their realtor under California law, saying he failed to disclose their home’s dark secret.

While California law would require the Realtor to disclose that information to potential buyers if they knew it, the Realtor in this case denies any wrongdoing.

In some states, however, that isn’t the case, and realtor estate agents have no legal obligation to disclose past crime information about the home.

It’s incredible how quickly things change. Just a few years ago, conventional wisdom was that it would take an eternity to work through the excess inventory created by the housing bust and subsequent foreclosure crisis. In reality, banks proved adept at managing their REO inventory, preventing the anticipated glut. Meanwhile, little new housing was built as financing dried up and builders pulled back in fear of competing with the anticipated bank REO liquidation. Fast forward to 2016 and the stark reality of a new sort of housing crisis: there simply aren’t enough units being built to satisfy household creation. The pivot has been as pronounced as it has been swift and it doesn’t appear as if things are about to change anytime soon. The Federal Government’s bi-annual report on housing inventory provides a rather bleak outlook, especially for entry level buyers and renters. ULI put together an excellent summary of the report here (emphasis mine):

“Newly released data and analysis illustrate a major obstacle to a fully healthy housing market in the United States: the nation is not building nearly enough new residential units. The serious shortage of new supply is bottling up housing demand and pushing home prices and apartment rents well beyond what a growing number of households can afford. …

At some point, the laws of economics dictate that this has to change. We aren’t going to stop creating households and people can’t continue to pay an ever-larger percentage of their incomes towards housing costs without resulting in adverse economic consequences. Demographics are improving for household creation through at least 2024, meaning that the housing shortage will get worse as the deficit continues to widen unless we ramp up production in short order. Unfortunately, as you can see it’s not a problem that’s easily solved.

* The link between housing production and outward expansion is unmistakable: cities that expand more produce proportionally more new housing.

* Throughout the country, housing production is skewed towards low density areas.

* Densification has slowed down across the board, and especially in expensive cities, undermining their ability to compensate for less outward expansion.

* Unless they enact fundamental changes that allow for substantially more densification, cities confronting growth pressure face a tradeoff between accommodating growth through outward expansion, or accepting the social implications of failing to build enough new housing.

How do you figure his support comes from third world slums? I see his support all over. His poll numbers are getting better among all categories. It’s true that his original support was very strong among poor/middle class white folks but that’s because they have been the most affected by the jobs shipping overseas and immigration in general.

I think you are mislead because your job doesn’t require a hammer and tool belt. Your job requires more intelligent but you seem to be fooled by idea that only racist, poor uneducated, white folks, and xenophobes support Trump. This time around your “perspective” appears to be wrong. You can’t say one good thing that Trump does because you are just a hater and sadly it is affecting your judgment of the real world.

It’s a long time from now until election but no matter who wins, this election truly shows how divided this country is and everyone else thinks it’s the other people that need to change instead of looking at the real issues.

everyone else thinks it’s the other people that need to change instead of looking at the real issues

This is a universal voter trait. You see this most dramatically in Congressional approval ratings. Congress often has approval ratings in the low 20s or worse. Everyone hates Congress, but most people strongly support their own representatives. Most people fail to realize their own representative is part of the problem.

Which is why I tend to agree that major issues should be addressed at the local and State level. Instead the FED comes in and rams policies down our throats and not every State is the same. States have different needs and populations, they should be allowed to vote to a “certain” degree to what they want without being bashed at the national level by everyone else. Instead big States like CA, NY, and TX want everyone to be like them. So it creates too much division.

Matching the solution to the scale of the problem is a challenge for government at every level. Our land use problems are Statewide, yet all land use regulations are local. That’s a problem. Bad schools are a local problem, yet we still try to find state or federal solutions. They don’t work.

Yep, just like I thought.. Perspective has reached the depression stage re: Trump. His behavior is typical of the depressed. One moment calling for high-minded discussion and the next resorting to ad hominems, strawmen, and a general erosion of his standards of conduct.

It makes for good discussion of differences in opinions, but his level of hatred for Trump is blinding him from reality. I think we can all agree most President’s can’t change every little thing and we can safely say that both candidates will turn around and only deliver about 2 promises out of 100.

I am equally opposed to most sides of the political spectrum but I’m ready to take a gamble on a person that isn’t caving to the status quo.

Our growing population is actually much more homegrown than imported. Californian’s have over 500,000 babies each year. If we had no migration we would still need to add a large amount of new housing just to accommodate our children. Right now, we don’t even keep up with the homegrown demand.

According to the CIA population stats, the US would be facing negative growth without immigration, similar to many countries in Europe. Since California is a top destination for immigrants, the growth from immigration is particularly pronounced here.

A few of the older neighborhoods in Irvine are just as generic as the photos, but by and large, the streetscape experience of both pedestrians and motorists in Irvine is first-rate. Actually, most new communities built since 2000 in Orange County are well planned.

Trump’s primary support comes from “third world slums” full of poorly educated white folks.

Has it occurred to you that maybe Trump appeals to the poorly educated in general, regardless of racial background?

Black voters are turning from Clinton to Trump in new poll

Donald Trump is gaining support among African-American voters — whose enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is eroding, a tracking poll released Saturday revealed.

Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday.

Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.

Clinton’s nearly 20-point crash began Sunday, said Dan Schnur of USC. Sunday was the day Clinton was recorded collapsing while entering a Secret Service van at a 9/11 event.

The survey, which spanned through Friday, included the days in which Trump reignited the divisive “birther” issue — which critics contend is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s first black president.

Bill had the advantage of being an outsider who did a great deal for minorities in Arkansas. Hillary is an insider who is perceived as part of the problem. It should be shocking and dismaying to her campaign for her to lose minority support.

The real shocker will come from the exit polls when the Bernie Sanders group admits to voting for Trump. Nobody sees that one coming.

If Trump manages to get 20% black support, I don’t think Hillary has a path to victory. Scooping up blue collar support from both white and black voters would overwhelm the college-educated vote. There just aren’t enough Hispanic and college-educated whites to overcome that.

There’s also an interesting phenomenon with Rubio’s Senate re-election in Florida driving Cuban-American turnout that could benefit Trump in that state, because most voters will not split the ticket. If they vote Republican for Rubio they are more likely to vote Republican for Trump.

It’s going to be a fun couple of months watching this unfold. The first debate is one week from today!!